It was July 29, and Loren Lemke had been treasure hunting for seven hours, sifting through garbage, getting bitten by bugs, and subsisting on wild berries. He was about to throw in the towel and catch a bus home when he hit the motherlode: a mysterious ancient sword. This past Wednesday, the American expat documented his incredible find on TikTok.
“I started to freak out before my brain would acknowledge what I was looking at,” he says. “Once I found the sword I had to stop digging. I didn’t have any energy left.”
Originally from Tucson, Arizona, Lemke has lived in Turku, Finland for the past decade. Though he has been into metal detecting since childhood, he got back into it after moving abroad. Lemke primarily metal detects on farm fields after asking permission from farmers and offering to remove aluminum waste in return. He estimates that he yields one interesting find per 50 to 100 pieces of garbage. Still, providing this service has allowed Lemke to build connections with people who let him search their land.
“It’s kind of just snowballed, as farmers know other farmers,” Lemnke says.
Many European countries highly restrict metal detecting—or make the practice illegal—but Finland’s “everyman laws” enable people to freely metal detect without a permit so long as they stay away from protected areas, private property, any place that might cause damage. Still, it’s not exactly finders keepers. Any object found that is more than a century old must be reported to the government, which could potentially decide to claim the item. It’s a bit different, though, when it comes to much older items with historic significance, like the viking age sword; archaeologists come in to investigate.
Nothing else was found nearby the sword, apart from a 1,000-year-old hole. And Lemke didn’t make any cash from the find—he gave it to a beleaguered local museum. “I would recommend not getting into the hobby if you’re interested in making money,” he notes. “It is a terrible way to make money.”
To some, metal detecting may sound like treasure hunting mixed with leg day, Lemke insists it’s also about the history and finding magic in the world around him. “Every time I find something new, it’s an opportunity to learn something new,” he says. “I like to learn the history behind an object, and oftentimes they have interesting stories.”